Blizzard: Get Your Game On(line)!
This is the first column in a new series on the electronic media industry. I hope you enjoy it.
Blizzard Announces the Opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj: Chaos Ensues
What happens when software becomes inoperable? More specifically, what happens when millions of people depend on your software and suddenly cannot use it?
Like a pebble dropped in a pond teeming with life, a single ripple may disturb the lives of some pond denizens. However, a cannonball would likely draw the attention of the entire pond. So it is with successful software companies. Blizzard Entertainment ("Blizzard"), a software publisher and developer with a sterling reputation for creating computer games which have captivated the imagination (and productive hours) of many devotees worldwide, has drawn the ire of its fans for recent connection problems with its massively multiplayer online roleplaying game ("MMORPG") entitled World of Warcraft ("WoW"). Prospective adventurers log onto a series of servers where they may create a character and explore the online world with their fellow players. As a MMORPG with the largest subscriber base, however, the technological challenge of maintaining all those WoW servers can be quite daunting. Server up-time has unfortunately been a spectre which has haunted the WoW team at Blizzard from the day of WoW's release and users have been seeking the help of technical support more than with past titles.
And with good reason. With monthly fees which range from $17.99 for one month's play to approximately $77 for a 6 month period, downtime is something which is often unacceptable to hard-core gamers or those who would simply like to escape reality after a hard day's work. To both parties, the long wait times or outages have exiled gamers from the World of Warcraft and prevented them from enjoying the fruit of their hard-earned hours invested into creating personalized WoW characters and all their attendant loot.
The high degree of social interaction between players from all over the world has contributed to WoW's success, but frequent outages have splintered these social networks and disturbed nightly, daily, or weekly rituals of behavior. Communication with online friends, sometimes known only by their online avatars, is broken. The technological problems associated with maintaining a complex system like the WoW infrastructure rear their ugly heads and once again highlight the tenuous nature of modern digital social networks.
So is Blizzard a victim of its own success? One may argue that the sheer number of users attempting to access the services provided by Blizzard at one time creates an unsolvable problem in determining how much capacity (bandwidth, servers, or storage space) a company can reasonably be expected to meet. However, past experiences with Blizzard products may illustrate a pattern of not meeting user expectations or worse, failing to plan for remedies when those expectations are eventually dashed.
Blizzard games have historically been immensely popular. From the real-time strategy ("RTS") genre that spawn WoW, Blizzard's "Warcraft" series (and to a lesser extent its "Starcraft" series) have influenced the game industry in different ways. While some may argue that Blizzard's designers merely took existing game elements or conventions and refined them, others argue that Blizzard has truly innovated in an industry infamous for its surprisingly conservative approach to market reactions in game development. The tired model of taking what is hot and replicating it ad nauseum is a trend too often seen in the entertainment software market (think of the number of "Tycoon" games you have seen loitering in the bargain bin, or worse yet the number of $17.99 budget first person shooter ("FPS") games you have seen).
Take Blizzard's Diablo series, an incarnation of the Role-Playing Game ("RPG") designed more for action than strategy. It had (and still has) a loyal following of users who like the hack 'n slash type of gameplay offered. Yet it, like its Warcraft and Starcraft cousins, also had problems with connection difficulties, though none as serious or large-scale as Wow's. All of these games have garnered loyal players and have been immensely popular. But do sheer numbers alone explain the lack of server capacity?
I don't think so. Innovation and content creation always take a back seat to maintenance and continued enjoyment of existing resources. If Blizzard isn't willing to recognize the necessity of fixing existing problems, then it will face player apathy when it essentially asks players to pony up for the same connection problems with new content. Given the choice, why should users pay for the same problems with a new face rather than tough it out with the old problems?
Blizzard Announces the Opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj: Chaos Ensues
What happens when software becomes inoperable? More specifically, what happens when millions of people depend on your software and suddenly cannot use it?
Like a pebble dropped in a pond teeming with life, a single ripple may disturb the lives of some pond denizens. However, a cannonball would likely draw the attention of the entire pond. So it is with successful software companies. Blizzard Entertainment ("Blizzard"), a software publisher and developer with a sterling reputation for creating computer games which have captivated the imagination (and productive hours) of many devotees worldwide, has drawn the ire of its fans for recent connection problems with its massively multiplayer online roleplaying game ("MMORPG") entitled World of Warcraft ("WoW"). Prospective adventurers log onto a series of servers where they may create a character and explore the online world with their fellow players. As a MMORPG with the largest subscriber base, however, the technological challenge of maintaining all those WoW servers can be quite daunting. Server up-time has unfortunately been a spectre which has haunted the WoW team at Blizzard from the day of WoW's release and users have been seeking the help of technical support more than with past titles.
And with good reason. With monthly fees which range from $17.99 for one month's play to approximately $77 for a 6 month period, downtime is something which is often unacceptable to hard-core gamers or those who would simply like to escape reality after a hard day's work. To both parties, the long wait times or outages have exiled gamers from the World of Warcraft and prevented them from enjoying the fruit of their hard-earned hours invested into creating personalized WoW characters and all their attendant loot.
The high degree of social interaction between players from all over the world has contributed to WoW's success, but frequent outages have splintered these social networks and disturbed nightly, daily, or weekly rituals of behavior. Communication with online friends, sometimes known only by their online avatars, is broken. The technological problems associated with maintaining a complex system like the WoW infrastructure rear their ugly heads and once again highlight the tenuous nature of modern digital social networks.
So is Blizzard a victim of its own success? One may argue that the sheer number of users attempting to access the services provided by Blizzard at one time creates an unsolvable problem in determining how much capacity (bandwidth, servers, or storage space) a company can reasonably be expected to meet. However, past experiences with Blizzard products may illustrate a pattern of not meeting user expectations or worse, failing to plan for remedies when those expectations are eventually dashed.
Blizzard games have historically been immensely popular. From the real-time strategy ("RTS") genre that spawn WoW, Blizzard's "Warcraft" series (and to a lesser extent its "Starcraft" series) have influenced the game industry in different ways. While some may argue that Blizzard's designers merely took existing game elements or conventions and refined them, others argue that Blizzard has truly innovated in an industry infamous for its surprisingly conservative approach to market reactions in game development. The tired model of taking what is hot and replicating it ad nauseum is a trend too often seen in the entertainment software market (think of the number of "Tycoon" games you have seen loitering in the bargain bin, or worse yet the number of $17.99 budget first person shooter ("FPS") games you have seen).
Take Blizzard's Diablo series, an incarnation of the Role-Playing Game ("RPG") designed more for action than strategy. It had (and still has) a loyal following of users who like the hack 'n slash type of gameplay offered. Yet it, like its Warcraft and Starcraft cousins, also had problems with connection difficulties, though none as serious or large-scale as Wow's. All of these games have garnered loyal players and have been immensely popular. But do sheer numbers alone explain the lack of server capacity?
I don't think so. Innovation and content creation always take a back seat to maintenance and continued enjoyment of existing resources. If Blizzard isn't willing to recognize the necessity of fixing existing problems, then it will face player apathy when it essentially asks players to pony up for the same connection problems with new content. Given the choice, why should users pay for the same problems with a new face rather than tough it out with the old problems?
Blizzard's Battle.net service is free for most of its games, although access to it is required under WoW. Blizzard's introduction of Battle.net as a free service for connecting users looking for multiplayer action was helpful in generating goodwill among players at a time when other game companies decided to charge for similar services. Yet, that goodwill tends to sour when users paying for access cannot do so on a regular bastis.
What Blizzard does in the next few months, indeed the next few weeks, is critical to the continuing success of its Warcraft franchise. Blizzard has announced the imminent release of an expansion pack with new content, a new playable race (the Blood Elves), and new adventures for those wanting to inject your more playability into their lives. However, the recent string of troubles with server stability and connection woes experienced by many users may slow sales of a promising offering. Blizzard ought to make a commitment to stabilizing its current WoW infrastructure and cementing that commitment with regular, live, updates on the status of the servers. The prospect of losing paying players to its competitors (such as ArenaNet's GuildWars, which is free to play online after an initial purchase of the software) would undercut Blizzard's future abilities to offer new content (one of the main justifications for its monthly fees) and reduce the vibrancy of its online world through the loss of its most essential resource: the gamers. Here's hoping that the journey to the World of Warcraft will be a smoother ride for all.
What Blizzard does in the next few months, indeed the next few weeks, is critical to the continuing success of its Warcraft franchise. Blizzard has announced the imminent release of an expansion pack with new content, a new playable race (the Blood Elves), and new adventures for those wanting to inject your more playability into their lives. However, the recent string of troubles with server stability and connection woes experienced by many users may slow sales of a promising offering. Blizzard ought to make a commitment to stabilizing its current WoW infrastructure and cementing that commitment with regular, live, updates on the status of the servers. The prospect of losing paying players to its competitors (such as ArenaNet's GuildWars, which is free to play online after an initial purchase of the software) would undercut Blizzard's future abilities to offer new content (one of the main justifications for its monthly fees) and reduce the vibrancy of its online world through the loss of its most essential resource: the gamers. Here's hoping that the journey to the World of Warcraft will be a smoother ride for all.
posted by Unknown @ 10:05:00 PM
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